What's Best for Fuu

A Twist of Fate

"Then we should hope Hiroshi-san is wise enough to know better..." Jin sighed, adjusting his glasses upon his face. Love could make people do strange things...for instance stealing away a brothel girl and hiding her in a divorce temple until you could return and wed her, just as an example. Mugen didn't need jealousy as an excuse to fight, but Hiroshi might be quicker to jump into a fray if he knew the vagabond's words had hurt the woman he loved.

The atmosphere seemed to grow heavy with these thoughts as similar ones floated through Shino's mind as well. They continued on to the home they had been welcomed into in silence.

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Though his appetite wasn't what it had been when he entered the tea house, Mugen munched idly on his dumplings. He even took the occasional sip of his tea, if only to wash the food down. His mind wasn't really focused on his meal, instead it danced with thoughts of a certain young waitress, and echoed with words spoken by the tea house proprietress. Fuu cared...she often spoke of how he, Mugen, had saved her life.

Of course, she'd saved him too, though this was the first time he'd ever admitted as much. She kept the crow men at bay, chasing them away and pulling the rogue back from the brink. Her voice could reach out through the darkness of a fading life and somehow guide him to return to life. When he heard her whining turn to desperate pleading on his behalf, something in him knew he had to stay. He couldn't just leave her alone.

But wasn't that what he was going to do? Leave Edo, never come back, let the girl have her life with her handsome samurai and erase himself completely. She wanted him to, though. She'd said so. She hated him, and she never wanted to see him again, and somehow, that made his stomach lurch and churn, despite the fact that he knew he wasn't hungry. Maybe he was sick? Yeah, sick of seeing her with Pretty Boy.

His eyes closed as he blew a sigh, placing the skewer that had been holding his four dumplings together between his teeth. The food was gone, so now he set to gnawing on wood that had pierced them. After hearing what the hag had said, he was beginning to realize some things, mostly about himself. He didn't know if Fuu hated him...but he was beginning to understand why he got so irritated when she and Junior Samurai were around. Looking back on things, he also began to notice some things about the journey he'd made with the waitress four years prior.

Back then, she was annoying as hell, the way she whined, the way she complained about him hitting the brothels, the way she always picked fights. But perhaps the most annoying thing of all was the fact that he couldn't shake her. Even when he wanted to run the hell away, he stayed. He just couldn't imagine leaving her alone, and for some reason he didn't want to leave her with just Jin. On top of that, spending all that time with her didn't really have any benefit for him! Sure, he complained about her lack of figure, but maybe that was an excuse, a way to talk himself out of seeing anything appealing. Because she was off limits...that girl was sweet and innocent, and needed him. For some reason he didn't yet fathom, he couldn't take advantage of that.

But now...now she wasn't a girl anymore, not really. She was twenty, past the minimum age for marriage, not that he wanted to settle down of course! Her slender fifteen year old form had bloomed into womanly curves. The argument that she was physically unappealing was quickly losing ground in his mind. Sure, she was still innocent, so there was that to hold him at bay. But it didn't stop him from being upset that she was getting married! And she was marrying a clone of Fishface, who she had contacted just to tell about the engagement apparently.

Mugen's features fell into a scowl. Not only had she accepted the proposal while Mugen was there, but she had almost seemed to do it to spite him. That wasn't Fuu though. Was it? She could be a whiner, and she could be spiteful, but she would definitely not use Junior Samurai just to get revenge. Besides, she liked the good guys. Like Jin...